They lived as if in two separate yet parallel universes, drawn together by a single fascination: the rugged American West. Paragons of popular Western art, Frederic Remington was a Yale University-trained artist who lived and worked in New York and Charles M. Russell was a Montana wrangler and self-taught artist. Their work illustrated the tales of cowboys, soldiers and Native Americans while molding a nation's visual impression of itself from the late 1800s to the present.

They lived as if in two separate yet parallel universes, drawn together by a single fascination: the rugged American West. Paragons of popular Western art, Frederic Remington was a Yale University-trained artist who lived and worked in New York and Charles M. Russell was a Montana wrangler and self-taught artist. Their work illustrated the tales of cowboys, soldiers and Native Americans while molding a nation's visual impression of itself from the late 1800s to the present.

March 21, 1988 | DEBORAH CAULFIELD, Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press

The new Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles has purchased an 87-piece Western art collection worth an estimated $8.7 million. The collection--on permanent loan since 1967 to the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Neb., contains works by 37 artists, including Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, Albert Bierstadt and George Catlin.

You can see what man has made from an automobile, but the only way to see what God has made is from the back of a horse. --Charles M. Russell That quote by the late Western artist appears in the brochure for Los Padres Wilderness Outfitters, and neatly sums up Tony Alvis' attitude about the great outdoors. Alvis, who is Los Padres Wilderness Outfitters, guides adventurous green horns into Ventura County backcountry.

Who is David Pagel and who cares what he thinks about Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell at the Bowers Museum ("A Wild West Saddled by Snobbery," July 20)? The facts are these: This exhibition was put together from some 60 different collections around the country by Peter Hassrick, known as the nation's leading scholar on the two best-known Western artists of all time. I've been to the exhibition. It's terrific, and I plan to go again and again. Don't let the poison pen of a bitter cynic dissuade you from seeing a truly rare collection of two great American master painters of the Old West.

Christopher Reynold's splendid article about Sheridan, Wyo., and surrounding small towns captured the spirit of the area ("True West," June 19). I grew up in Buffalo, Wyo., 30-plus miles south of Sheridan. Legend has it that the Occidental Hotel in Buffalo was where the Virginian "got his man." Owen Wister, author of "The Virginian," stayed there briefly. The Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum in Buffalo has displays and artifacts of historical events of the area. U.S. 16 from Buffalo to Yellowstone will take you past streams, lakes and wilderness areas over the Bighorn Mountains and through Tensleep Canyon.

It started with a single sculpture -- a rifle-toting, horse-riding bronze of Buffalo Bill Cody by New York artist-heiress Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Now, the Whitney Gallery of Western Art -- located in Cody's namesake community just east of Yellowstone National Park -- is marking its first half-century with a sweeping reinstallation. The Whitney name stands as a reminder that it was made possible with Eastern largess, the same behind New York's Whitney Museum of American Art. "We used to kid about how to build a western museum with eastern money, but it was basically true," said former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, chairman of the gallery's parent institution, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center.

To some viewers, the term "Western art" conjures up images of classic Greek statues, medieval altarpieces, Renaissance portraits and modern abstractions. To others, the same words bring to mind romanticized pictures of cowboys and Indians. Although these two outlooks seem to belong to different universes, they collide in "Remington, Russell and the Language of Western Art," a corny exhibition at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana.

Los Angeles has MoCA, New York has the Met and Washington has the Smithsonian. Impressive. But do they have a Tower of Beauty, a turn-of-the-century hotel complete with period kitchen implements, a silent-film star's rancho and a tribute to the dentist who founded a city? To see these homespun museums, you need go no further than the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. Western Hotel/Museum 557 W. Lancaster Blvd., Lancaster Hours: noon to 4 p.m., Fridays through Sundays.

Movies Set in the distant future, Steven Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" is a tale of humanity in an age of intelligent machines. Harley Joel Osment, right with Jude Law, stars as the first "mecha" boy programmed with a human-like capacity for love. Opens Friday.